Hockey East Journal: Rivalry brings out BU's best

Boston University vs. Boston College has long been a
throw-out-the-records kind of rivalry. This season, though, only
one of the two Commonwealth Avenue powers – formerly
top-ranked BC – has lived up to its preseason billing as one
of Hockey East’s best teams, while BU got off to a 3-3-1
start riddled with ugly efforts, including the 7-1 drubbing handed
to the Terriers by UMass-Lowell on Nov. 5.

Funny how playing an eternal rival brings out the best in a
team.

The Terriers had a possible breakthrough weekend, punctuated by
Sunday’s dominating 5-0 win over the Eagles. Four Terriers
had goals in the game, with Wade Megan scoring BU’s second
and fifth goal, an unlikely double-dip of a power-play goal late in
the first period and a shorthanded tally with less than 90 seconds
to go in the third.

Arguably more important than the five on BU’s side of the
Conte Forum scoreboards was the zero on the BC end. Kieran
Millan’s 21-save shutout was, rather amazingly, the first the
Terriers have ever hung on Boston College in 27-plus years of
Hockey East play.

While Millan deserves a healthy cut of the credit for the clean
sheet, it was just as much a result of the aggressive, effective
defensive game the Terriers put together – something you
wouldn’t even think to say about BU during the first five
weeks of the season. The Terriers, who returned almost all of the
starters from last year’s talented but underachieving team,
looked on paper in the preseason like the team to beat, but played
on the ice through the first month and a half like a team to
beat.
In particular, the Terriers seemed to play up or down to the
assumed level of their opponent, with memories of a season-opening
trouncing of UNH fading in the harsh light of last week’s
moribund loss to UMass-Lowell.

“I think our team has had that tendency in the past, we
maybe don’t respect the opponent, and you’ve seen that
in a few of our losses,” said BU captain Chris Connolly, who
had a pair of assists Sunday. “That’s a message
we’re trying to send to the rest of our team, that regardless
of who we’re playing, it’s going to be a battle night
in and night out. It’s essentially a longer college football
season in that every game matters.”

If this is the start of a great awakening for BU, the seeds were
sown a while back in a loss to Holy Cross and a hard-fought three
points against UMass. Those seeds got a shot of fertilizer in the
pitiful loss to UMass-Lowell, too.

“It was the absolute lack of respect, or lack of effort,
or lack of both up at UMass-Lowell,” BU coach Jack Parker
(Somerville, Mass.) said. “We were flabbergasted that
UMass-Lowell was that good, well, how can you not think
they’re that good? So that was a real mistake on (the
coaches’) part, we couldn’t get them ready for that.
They were embarrassed by that, no question about it, and they came
back and they were geared up to play. It was nice that he had the
two top teams in the league to play after last weekend.”

Though second-place Merrimack pulled out of Aggannis Arena
Friday night with a win, BU was already starting to show signs of
life, holding a 2-1 lead for 40:51 until Brandon Brodhag tied it
for the Warriors with 1:56 to go, followed by Merrimack freshman
Connor Toomey’s (Billerica, Mass.) game winner 22 seconds
into overtime.

“We certainly played up tonight, and we played up Friday
for the most part,” Parker said Sunday. “I don’t
know why we would play down to anybody, because this league is so
tough. We’ve already shown the rest of the league that.
We’ll certainly remember it, I think.”

Parker also said the Terriers are finally starting to
“feel like a BU hockey team” after the three-point
weekend, and if that’s not enough, he was also feeling frisky
enough to fire a shot across the bow of the Boston College
fans.

“I thought it was fabulous that (the sizable BU traveling
party) were all there in those game jerseys,” Parker said.
“Those game jerseys cost a lot more than those (BC
‘Superfan’) T-shirts.”

Guess the rivalry’s on, then.

Game of the Week

UNH at Boston University, Saturday

The first time these two teams met was the season opener, and a
5-0 BU win on Oct. 8. But the Wildcats have improved steadily since
then, and suddenly both squads look a little more like their old
selves, setting up the possibility of some real fireworks in Boston
on Saturday night.

Hockey East power ratings

1. Merrimack (8-0-1, 6-0-1 HEA) –
Friday’s win over BU was the second straight overtime victory
for the Warriors, but they needed only 20 seconds to win it on
Billerica, Mass., native Connor Toomey’s goal in the extra
session, and are now the No. 2 team in the country for the first
time in their Div. 1 history.

2. Boston College (9-3-0, 7-2-0) –
No. 3 BC took care of one Beanpot rival with a 2-1 win over
Northeastern Friday, but played its worst game of the year in
Sunday’s loss at home to BU, and with a Friday night clash
with No. 4 Notre Dame on the docket for this weekend, it’s a
bad time for their game to start looking suspect.

3. Providence (6-3-1, 4-2-0) – Two
wins over dead program walking Alabama-Huntsville won’t do
anything in the standings for the Friars, but they showed
they’re still rolling as they enter Friday’s game
against Northeastern.

4. UNH (4-4-2, 3-3-1) – The Wildcats
couldn’t have been happy about coming out of a one-game trip
to last-place Vermont with only one point after Saturday’s
tie, especially after taking a lead into the final two minutes of
regulation before H.T. Lenz evened it up with 1:40 to go.

5. Boston University (4-4-1,
3-3-1) – BU has been playing .500 hockey almost
the whole season, but Sunday’s 5-0 stomping of BC gives them
a little extra bounce with a pair of home games against Vermont and
UNH on tap this weekend.

6. Maine (3-6-1, 3-5-0) – The Black
Bears took it on the chin against a surging UMass-Lowell team in
Maine’s second straight two-loss weekend.

7. UMass-Lowell (5-3-0, 3-2-0) –
Just like that, the River Hawks pulled themselves into a winning
record, both overall and in league play, striding into Alfond Arena
to snatch a pair of wins away from Maine.

8. UMass (2-4-2, 4-4-2) – Conor
Allen gave the Minutemen their first big highlight of the young
season with a hat trick against Holy Cross Friday night, and a 4-2
win over Northeastern the next evening pushed the Minutemen ahead
of the Huskies both here and in the standings.

9. Northeastern (1-7-2, 1-7-2) –
It’s now more than 30 days since Northeastern has won a game,
and coach Jim Madigan (Milton, Mass.) sounds frustrated with quotes
in the press about every night being the same old, same old for his
team.

10. Vermont (1-5-1, 0-4-1) – UVM
picked up its first point of the season, and while they’re
still winless in Hockey East play, the late-game heroics that led
to Saturday’s tie with UNH could give the struggling
Catamounts a boost before the holiday break.